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When people are confronted with negative feedback, they often respond by trying to protect their self-image. But not everyone reacts the same way. A new study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science provides evidence that certain personality traits shape how strongly people engage in self-protective reactions.
Most people have experienced moments when they receive feedback that challenges how they see themselves. Whether it comes from a failed exam, a workplace critique, or a social rejection, such feedback can feel threatening. Psychological theory suggests that people are motivated to defend themselves in these situations, in order to maintain a positive self-image. This defensive motivation, often called the self-protection motive, can prompt people to dismiss the feedback, blame external factors, or even question the credibility of the source providing the information.
While these reactions have been well documented, less is known about why some people engage in them more than others. Previous research has hinted that personality traits such as self-esteem and narcissism play a role. People who think highly of themselves may be especially sensitive to negative feedback, making them more likely to react defensively.
At the same time, other traits—such as a desire to gain self-insight or a tendency to observe thoughts non-judgmentally, as is the case with mindfulness—have been thought to help people accept unflattering feedback without feeling threatened. The authors of the new study set out to examine these possibilities in a systematic and well-powered way, using a preregistered experiment and a large sample.
“This idea came from an earlier project on how well people know themselves. We found that simply wanting self-knowledge doesn’t always lead to having more accurate self-knowledge,” said study author Christoph Heine, a psychologist and personality researcher at Witten/Herdecke University.
“One reason may be that several motives shape how we see ourselves. A big one is protecting a positive self-image: when feedback feels threatening, we often react defensively. If those defenses kick in automatically, even people who genuinely want to know themselves can end up with distorted self-views. So we set out to study how people respond to threatening feedback and whether certain personality traits make those defensive reactions more or less likely.”
The study involved 1,744 adults from Germany, ranging in age from 18 to 89. Participants were recruited through a research panel and took part in an online study framed as an investigation of social perception and personality. Before receiving any feedback, participants completed questionnaires assessing a range of personality traits. These included general self-esteem, narcissism (including admiration and rivalry components), the self-insight motive, and mindfulness. Some traits were also assessed in a domain-specific way. For example, participants rated their own social sensitivity, which was the domain later targeted by the feedback.
Participants then completed a measure of social sensitivity: the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test, which asks people to infer emotions from photos of eyes. After finishing the test, participants were randomly assigned to receive either positive or negative feedback. Those in the positive condition were told they had performed better than 80 percent of a comparison group, while those in the negative condition were told they performed worse than 80 percent.
To measure self-protective reactions, the researchers asked participants to rate the validity of the test, evaluate the competence of the researchers who created it, and assess the importance of social sensitivity as a trait. In addition, participants rated unrelated objects, such as a mug or a hanger, to see whether any effects were specific to self-related outcomes or simply reflected a general negative mood.
Across the board, participants who received negative feedback were more likely to question the validity of the test, view the researchers as less competent, and rate social sensitivity as less important compared to those who received positive feedback. These findings support the idea that negative feedback prompts people to protect their self-image.
But the strength of these reactions varied depending on personality. As predicted, people with high self-esteem were more likely to reject the negative feedback. This effect was stronger when the self-esteem was specific to the domain of social sensitivity. In other words, if someone believed they were socially perceptive and then received feedback suggesting otherwise, they were particularly likely to doubt the test.
Narcissistic traits showed a similar pattern. Individuals high in grandiose narcissism were more likely to show defensive responses, especially if their narcissism was centered on communal traits like being helpful or understanding—traits that relate directly to social sensitivity. Among the two components of narcissism, admiration (which reflects self-importance and pride) predicted stronger self-protective reactions, while rivalry (which reflects a tendency to be combative or defensive) did not show the same consistent effect. This finding challenges some theoretical expectations and suggests that admiration may be a more potent driver of defensive behavior than rivalry.
“People want to see themselves positively and defend their self-concept in the face of threat,” Heine told PsyPost. “However, people don’t all respond in the same way, and it is not just about the situation. It is also about who they are. Having high self-esteem or narcissism make people more likely to question negative feedback, especially in areas they see as strengths. Being aware of our own dispositions can sharpen our sensitivity to these tendencies as they arise.”
Unexpectedly, individuals who scored high on the self-insight motive—those who say they want to know their strengths and weaknesses—also responded more defensively to negative feedback. This finding runs counter to the idea that people motivated to understand themselves would be more accepting of unpleasant truths. Instead, it suggests that even those who are motivated to gain self-knowledge might resist feedback when it threatens their self-image. This may help explain why wanting to understand oneself does not always translate into having more accurate self-knowledge.
The findings related to mindfulness were also contrary to expectations. People who scored high on self-reported mindfulness showed stronger, not weaker, self-protective reactions to negative feedback. The researchers suggest that this may reflect a problem with how mindfulness is measured. Self-reported mindfulness scores may be more closely linked to socially desirable traits, such as viewing oneself as calm and aware, rather than accurately reflecting the ability to respond non-reactively to challenging situations. In fact, scores on mindfulness were positively correlated with communal narcissism, which may help explain why those high in mindfulness were more defensive in the face of social sensitivity feedback.
“We expected that being mindful would help people step back and reduce defensive reactions,” Heine said. “Being a mindful person means to take a non-judgmental perspective. However, that did not happen. This could mean our measures we usually use to assess mindfulness are not very good in doing so, or it could mean that self-protective reactions are strong enough that mindfulness does not reliably buffer against them.”
Finally, the researchers found that while negative feedback made people feel more negative overall, as seen in their lower ratings of unrelated objects, this general negativity was not influenced by personality traits. Only the self-relevant outcomes were shaped by traits like self-esteem and narcissism, suggesting that these personality-driven reactions were specific to self-protective motives rather than general mood.
Although the study included a large, diverse adult sample, it focused solely on feedback about social sensitivity. It is not yet known whether the same patterns would hold for other types of feedback, such as feedback about intelligence or physical appearance. Future studies could test whether domain-specific self-esteem and narcissism consistently predict stronger defensive reactions across different feedback areas.
Another limitation is that the study focused on self-protection and did not directly assess other motives that may shape feedback responses. “We focused on self-protection,” Heine noted. “However, other motives, like self-verification, which describes the desire to confirms what we already believe about ourselves, may additionally shape our reactions. For example, someone with low self-esteem might have seen especially negative feedback as more credible because it fits their existing self-view. We measured only a handful of traits. There may be surely other traits and situational factors that influence how much and when people defend their self-image.”
The findings also raise questions about how to reduce unhelpful self-protective responses, especially in contexts like therapy, education, or the workplace. Learning to process negative feedback without defensiveness is an important skill. The researchers suggest that future work could explore how to help people maintain healthy self-esteem while remaining open to self-relevant criticism, especially in domains that feel central to their identity.
“It would be interesting to track how defensive reactions change over time, to test them in different feedback domains (e.g., social skills vs. intelligence), and to look at situational characteristics that influence self-protection,” Heine explained. “In the long run, it would be interesting to see whether we can find way that allow to reduce unhelpful self-protection without lowering healthy self-esteem.”
“Context matters. If negative feedback hits a domain that feels central to someone’s identity (say, a ‘creative’ person receiving criticism of their creativity), defensive reactions are especially strong. As people often build education and careers around their perceived strengths, learning to engage with threatening feedback in valued domains is crucial—even though it is uncomfortable.”
The study, “The Ego’s Bodyguard: The Role of Personality in Self-Protective Reactions,” was authored by Christoph Heine, Stefan C. Schmukle, and Michael Dufner.
